“Staring at the bottom of your glass,
Hoping one day you’ll make a dream last.
But dreams come slow and they go fast.”
“Let Her Go”
Passenger


Steve Rogers wasn’t the sort of man to go spoiling for a fight. Contrary to his Captain America persona, he wasn’t particularly interested in constant conflict and aggression. Sure, there was still the scrawny kid from Brooklyn inside, who didn’t back down from a fight if it involved a bully. And Tony Stark was – in Steve’s humble opinion – the worst kind of bully.

Brilliant, wealthy, and arrogant. Steve had to wonder if Tony had been the sort of kid who used to stuff other students in their lockers and steal their lunch money just for the kicks of it. Because, really, what other reason would Stark have for making fun of another man’s sex life (or, rather, lack of it), except that he was a bully who enjoyed belittling the “lesser guy”.

It never occurred to Steve that maybe, just maybe, Tony was a little more perceptive than everyone gave him credit for and that he was genuinely interested in pushing other people out of their comfort zones. Of course, Tony’s methods for doing so left a lot to be desired in the way of acceptable social norms…

Steve caught up with Jane and Pepper in the atrium and let them know that Darcy would be coming momentarily. He then made himself scarce. The only solution for his frustration was a punching bag, so he took himself to Stark Tower’s state-of-the-art gym, which took up an entire floor all on its own. Tony frequently complained about how many punching bags Steve went through, but at the moment, Captain America was beyond giving a damn. If it hadn’t been 12 days before Christmas, he would have beat the streets in an attempt to blow off some of his steam, but he didn’t feel like fighting the crowds.

He also wasn’t really into Christmas. There were just too many memories of spending the holiday season on the front lines, trying to beat the Red Skull to his next hapless civilian target. There were just too many memories of trying desperately not to say goodbye to Peggy over the radio.

Also, Steve really hated the snow and the cold. He could still remember, in perfect clarity, the bone-numbing kiss of hypothermia as he drifted off to a deep sleep beneath the Arctic ice. The very memory of it made him shudder compulsively in the nearly-stifling warmth of Stark Tower. It was warm enough in the building to walk around barefoot, but the thought of what he had once endured was enough to make him shiver.

With those thoughts in mind, Steve made short work of his first punching bag. Thor and Bruce, after watching Steve work his way through half a dozen punching bags in one session alone, had thoughtfully stacked an entire wall full of bags for him. Tony had promptly complained about having half of his gym taken over by boxing equipment, but when Steve had busted a bag open right in front of him after only three or four punches, Tony backed off of the issue.

The gym had become Steve’s sanctuary; none of the Avengers spent as much time in there as him. While there was plenty of new equipment there to confuse him, the boxing ring stayed the same. Some things were timeless – himself apparently included – and the satisfying thunk of fist-to-punching-bag was the same as he remembered. This was where Steve came to ground himself, when he was overwhelmed by the strangeness of the world around him. He came here when Tony put his teeth on edge, when Thor reminded him one too many times of his alien origins, when all the gidgets and gadgets of S.H.I.E.L.D rendered him incompetent.

It was also where he came when Darcy confused him – which was alarmingly often. It used to be that just women, as a blanket entity, confounded Steve. Now, he was beginning to realize to his very great chagrin, that there was just one woman who turned him back into the blushing, stammering, asthmatic fool from Brooklyn. He had observed the phenomena when Peggy had stolen his heart – when he was obsessing about just one particular dame, all the others seemed infinitely less intimidating.

He realized he was falling for Darcy, when he could talk to Jane without staring at her shoes, when he could complain to Pepper about Tony (a topic they oddly had in common), and when he could ask Natasha to pass the salt at the dinner table without promptly dropping it into the pot roast. It was if all his awkwardness was gradually redirected to one long-haired, brunette, nonstop-talking whirlwind. Thankfully, Darcy had a unique quality that made Steve’s complete incompetence around the fairer sex so much easier to hide than it had been in the past.

Darcy never shut up. From morning to dusk, she was the Avenger’s resident chatterbox. Everything was worthy of her running commentary – like the way Thor burned the toast in the morning (there were moments when Thor never failed to make look Captain America look like the consummate modern man and for that, Steve privately blessed him). She commented on the way Tony and Bruce could say one thing, which would in turn send Jane reeling off down the wondrous path of scientific discovery in a completely different direction. Darcy commented on the food, on Stark Tower, on the news, on senseless internet trivia, on the size of Hawkeye’s biceps. She talked, so Steve hardly ever had to open his mouth.

Except, when it came to baseball, or history, or the arts – Steve could hold his own in those conversations, most particularly because Darcy was just into that sort of stuff in a way no other dame Steve knew or had known had been. She had grown up with a grandfather who had played in the minor leagues – so she knew about baseball from Steve’s own time and she was kind enough to fill him in on the 70-or-odd years since he’d last watched a game. She loved history – although, most of her interest lay in political history, but Steve wasn’t splitting hairs. And while Darcy admitted that she couldn’t even draw a straight line, much less paint, she did love music.

She won his heart the day he caught her singing “Rhum and Coca Cola” completely off-tune, at the top of her lungs, while cleaning Jane’s lab equipment. That, really, was the start of their friendship – when he found out that Darcy had a secret love of what she called “vintage music”. They had spent numerous evenings since, huddled conspiratorially in a corner of the Stark Tower living room, listening to a wide mix of music which included a good selection of what Steve had grown up with, along with a healthy assortment of what Darcy called “Oldies”. While Steve still hadn’t decided if he could tolerate anything sung after 1970, he had pleasantly discovered, with Darcy’s guidance, a certain fondness for the Four Tops, Diana Ross and the Supremes, Frankie Valley, Elvis, the Beatles, and Johnny Cash.

They were currently trying to gauge Steve’s interest in Waylon Jennings, Loretta Lynn, and Hank Williams Sr. While Steve appreciated Darcy’s dedication to broadening his musical horizons, he hadn’t quite yet decided if “Country” was something he could tolerate for long periods of time. He was starting to suspect, however, that part of his aversion had to do with his own inability to comprehend anything after 1969. Darcy loved to tease him, but no…Captain America could not wrap his head around “drugs, sex, and rock and roll.”

Although, he would have gladly wrapped himself around a certain curvy, vivacious, blue-eyed brunette. While his thoughts in the beginning on the matter were mostly nebulous, Steve had wondered on more than one occasion what it would be like to pull Darcy’s body tight against his own, to feel her curves press gently into his harder angles.

His thoughts had apparently betrayed him at some point, because after Darcy went yawning off to bed one night, Clint had materialized next to Steve with a faint smirk and a book.
“Its old-school,” was all he said as he handed the faded paperback over to a deeply puzzled Steve. “But consider it a good introduction.”

“It” had turned out to be a singularly scandalous novel titled “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.” The first time Steve realized what comprised a significant portion of the book, he had dropped it next to his bed in complete and indescribable dismay; he had also had a hard time looking Clint in the eye for several weeks afterwards. However, curiosity and pride got the better of him – Steve had never not finished a book once he had started reading – and he slowly worked through the rest of the book, wondering the whole way if he was dooming himself to an eternity in Purgatory one inappropriate word at a time.

Clint, however, had been correct – “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”, while scandalous enough on its own, proved a sufficient gateway to Captain America’s moral undoing. Ideas that were less murky than before, began to dominate Steve’s thoughts, most especially in the evenings after Darcy had gone to bed. Those thoughts followed him straight into his own bed and he started to contemplate the inexcusable – taking release from his thoughts into his own two hands.

He had pleasured himself before, as a boy, but only a handful of times (no pun intended), mostly in his later teenage years. He had been raised a good Catholic man, with a healthy dose of good Catholic guilt. He had been raised not to sully himself or a good, virtuous woman, with such base, immoral thoughts. Thoughts lead to actions, after all, and it wouldn’t just stop with himself – eventually, those thoughts and actions would lead to a pregnancy outside of marriage and then where would he be? Caught in sin, he’d been told on more than one occasion. And for Steve, it wasn’t so much that he’d get himself caught up in impropriety – it was the thought that he’d get someone else caught up in a mistake that was only supposed to be his own. So, his experiences with masturbation were few and far between – just brief, guilty affairs that ended in a momentary respite from the worst of his urges and a sticky mess. He would then sneak into the nearest bathroom to wash off, and pray the entire time that no one would catch him with the evidence of his baser impulses all over his hands.

However, waking up after 70 years on ice, had put things into a very different perspective. The woman Steve would have gladly saved himself for was Peggy…and her fate was one of the very first things that he had asked Fury about. The blow had been hard to take at first – Peggy had died a year before he had been discovered. She had died a single woman, childless, and searching for him until the very end. But, there was only so much time he could spend mourning the past; Peggy was gone and even if she hadn’t been, she would have been well into her 90s by now. Steve mourned her, mourned the things they could have had together…but he had to move on.

He just didn’t expect himself to “move on” in the direction of Darcy Lewis.

And, if nothing else, Tony’s uncouth reminders of what Steve didn’t have served to remind him that he was still, impossibly, in the prime of his youth. 70 years had passed and he was just as young as he’d been when the Red Skull’s bomber had gone down into the Arctic. Steve still had all the urges of his age, still had all the desires he had fallen asleep with, and still had the capacity to physically and mentally appreciate a good-looking dame.

And oh, Darcy was as good-looking as they got, with a personality to match.

As Steve’s attraction to her grew, so did his private boldness. A sheepish investigation of Tony’s enormous library uncovered a section of books in a half-forgotten corner that were far more explicit than “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”. It took Steve a few weeks to get over his own personal sense of scandal, but after that had passed, he was left with very little doubt about what he wanted.

He wanted to run his fingers through her chestnut hair; he wanted to see if it was truly as soft as it looked. He wanted to shut her up halfway through a sentence, with a firm kiss on those pouty lips. He wanted to feel her witty tongue against his skin; he wanted to taste her. He wanted to wrap them both up in his sheets and stay curled around each other for hours on end.

Steve knew nothing of the mechanics of such things, but he had a general idea, thanks to Clint and his revolutionary audacity. And what he knew only in theory, he was fairly certain he would learn quickly with practical application …and with Darcy, Steve was sure that practical application would be fun. Darcy always made everything fun. It was such a large part of her appeal. Steve often felt as if he were Atlas, carrying the weight of the world on his broad shoulders. But, when Darcy was part of that equation, the responsibility of being the First Avenger was half as onerous.

He would gladly carry the weight of the world, as long as it included the incorrigible Darcy Lewis.

She haunted him, he wanted her. That’s what the punching bags were for, since he couldn’t bring himself to dare or hope he could have her. Sexual awareness, desire, stretched lazily through Steve’s veins and crawled purposefully beneath his skin. The only way he knew to exorcise his desire, was to sweat.

And Lord so help him, he tried not to think about Darcy Lewis while he did.

+ + +

“Hey, Steve.”

Her voice distracted him from his book. In any moment that he could spare, Captain America could be found with his nose stuck in a book. There was just so much information to take in…so much to learn, to know in order to survive in this brave new world…and the least threatening way to open up his horizons was to read. Natasha had tried introducing both Thor and Steve to Google, but Steve had quickly overwhelmed himself with the sheer amount of information that had been presented to him online. He had quickly decided that books were infinitely safer and less likely to give him a headache.

“Hey, Darcy,” he set his book down on top of the table and smiled hopefully at Darcy as she plopped down in the chair across from him.

Women were decidedly less lady-like in the modern age, but Steve decided he didn’t mind that about Darcy. He had no one to compare her to, really, and she was so far removed from Peggy’s ageless poise, that it had been surprisingly easy to accept Darcy for who she was.

Darcy didn’t answer right away and Steve was momentarily distracted by the way she chewed her bottom lip. She wore something called “lip gloss”, which wasn’t as brightly colored as lipstick, but left a light shimmery sheen on the lips that was intriguing all the same. His eyes fixated on the way she sucked her full bottom lip behind her teeth and worried it back and forth as she frowned thoughtfully at him. It took a moment or two for Steve to actually meet Darcy’s straightforward gaze and her look of perplexed concentration took him by surprise.

“Darcy?” he prompted cautiously.

She looked as if she’d been thinking hard about something all day. He hadn’t seen her since that morning, but come to think of it, Darcy had been acting a little preoccupied since he had shaken her awake on the couch. He thought it was a little weird – Darcy wasn’t usually so careful with her thoughts, usually preferring to spill her inner dialogue out for the whole world to hear. He raised a thick blond eyebrow and tried not to panic.

He had no idea how to break a woman out of her reverie. Indeed, there was a part of him that rather suspected such a thing was unspeakably rude. And since Darcy didn’t usually sit so still and so obviously deep in thought, he didn’t want to interrupt her until she was ready to divulge. Still...the silence was more awkward than normal and Steve started to squirm.

“Do you wanna’ go see a movie?” Darcy finally blurted and he was so relieved at first that he spoke before thinking.

“Sure!”

Steve’s words caught up with him, though, and he promptly snapped his mouth shut.

Wait…she had asked him out to the movies? Wasn’t he supposed to ask her out to the movies? Was this a date? It was date back in his day…you didn’t ask a girl out to the movies unless you were her brother or trying to court her. Clearly, times had changed, if a woman could so blatantly request such a thing and not blush in embarrassment.

Apparently, men and women going out to the movies together was a normal, everyday thing. Steve felt a little foolish…and he also felt that he should have been the first one to ask about the movies, since its meaning would have made more sense, at least to himself.

At least, if he asked Darcy out to the movies, he would have known it was a date. Come to think of it…he’d been sort of trying to figure out how to ask her out to the movies anyway. It’d been there, in the back of his mind as a half-baked plan for about two weeks, but as usual, Darcy had beaten him to the punch.

“Awesome,” Darcy barreled along at full speed, oblivious to Steve’s internal quandary. “There’s a new Disney movie out. I’m not really into Disney movies, but I figured it would be the least likely thing to shock you. You’ve heard of Disney, right?” her eyes narrowed slightly.

“Um…” Steve wracked his mind and then nodded whole heartedly, as the memories came flooding back to him. “Yeah! Walt Disney, right?”

Warmth spread through him at the sight of Darcy’s crooked smile.

“Yup! That’s the one!”

“He’s still making those cartoon movies?” Steve wondered in something akin to awe.

“Oh, yea,” Darcy shrugged nonchalantly. “Well, not Walt himself so much – he died in the 60s – but his corporation. It’s a big business, Disney. They’ve got movies, theme parks, merchandise…!”

“Theme parks?” Steve stumbled over the unfamiliar word; Darcy just shot him an inscrutable look.

“Remind me to Google Disney World for you some time,” she tapped the top of the table with her open palms. “It’ll blow your mind.”

Steve nearly swallowed his tongue. His recent clandestine research had broadened his mind, along with his vocabulary – the idea of Darcy “blowing his mind” conjured up visions of something altogether different than what she actually meant.

“You okay, Cap?” she leaned forward across the table and peered at him in concern. “You look funny all of a sudden.”

“Oh, nothing,” Steve shifted guiltily in his seat; he would not think of Darcy’s head bobbing between his thighs. “I’m fine.”

She gave him a look that clearly conveyed her doubt; he cleared his throat and awkwardly tried to get the conversation moving again.

“So…um…I’ve seen all the Disney movies. Well,” he paused, grimaced, and sheepishly amended. “All of the ones that came out before I went on ice,” Steve paused again, then perked a bit as he remembered his favorites. “I really liked Snow White and Dumbo. Pinocchio was fun, but I didn’t like it as much as the others. And Bambi was just depressing.”

“You’re seriously talking old school,” Darcy laughed and the two both relaxed; she was still acting a little on edge, but Steve took a deep breath and told himself that everything would be fine, regardless of whatever she had on her mind.

She was probably just nervous about asking him out to the movies. He knew he would, were the roles reversed…

“We’ve had a few Disney movies since then,” she added wryly.

“Oh? Like how many?” Steve leaned forward in interest.

“Oh, geez, hundreds, easy,” Darcy laughed again and waved her hand dismissively, as if hundreds of movies wasn’t a big thing.

Then again, after 70 years, Steve figured Disney had had plenty of time to monopolize the market.

“This newest one is supposed to be really good. Female empowerment and all that,” she practically bounced in her chair – Darcy did that from time to time.

It was quite endearing…and a bit distracting. Steve forced himself not to fixate on her chest. Frumpy sweater or no, he’d noticed her breast for a while and they had a mind of their own. For one, they wouldn’t just lay demurely beneath her scarves and relatively modest clothing. Oh, no…they just had to call attention to themselves. Steve had often caught himself wondering how much of them would fit into his hands.

“Er…‘female empowerment’?” he blinked owlishly as he tried to place the term. “Like…suffragettes?”

“Oh, geez,” Darcy rolled her eyes. “You are so behind the times. ‘Female empowerment’…like me tasing Iron Man in the junk.”

“What?” Steve thought his eyes couldn’t possibly get any wider.

Since when did Darcy have it in for Tony Stark?

“Oh, nothing,” she seemed to have realized what she said and a fine blush crept across her nose; she suddenly seemed incapable of looking him in the eye. “Tony just pissed me off earlier.”

“What’d he do?” Steve immediately felt the rush of male protectiveness surge to the forefront of his mood.

It was one thing for Tony Stark to needle and embarrass him. But to turn that insufferable lack of respect on a dame? Unacceptable.

“Oh, nothing,” Darcy looked, if anything, rather alarmed at the shift in Steve’s expression.

She hastily waved her hand between them and shook her head. Her ponytail bounced from shoulder to shoulder and Steve silently swore at himself. Why couldn’t he stay focused around her?

“Really, Steve, it’s nothing,” she insisted, even as he opened his mouth to press the issue further.

She stood up and motioned to him imploringly. Her mouth curved upward in a hopeful smile and for just a second, Steve imagined that this is what she’d look like inviting him to bed – shy, yet determined.

“Movie’s in an hour. We can walk to the nearest theater in thirty, if you don’t mind the cold. Popcorn on me?”

No…with Darcy at his side, Steve Rogers did not mind the cold. Not one blessed bit.

+ + +

“I invited you, let me pay.”

Prides were butting against each other outside the movie theater, as their breath froze in the air between them. Darcy had her feet planted stubbornly, her hands on her hips, her chin jutted out stubbornly as she stared up at him. Steve was eyeing the ticket counter behind her and figuring out how best to reach over her head and pass his twenty bucks to the clerk.

“Nope,” he was determined to out-stubborn her.

“Seriously, Steve,” Darcy stomped her foot impatiently.

He stared at her, trying so hard not to laugh.

“Did you just stomp your foot at me?”

“Damn straight,” she hissed, blue eyes blazing as she now crossed her arms over her chest. “Now stop being a chauvinistic Neanderthal.”

“Where I’m from, it’s called being chivalrous,” Steve corrected her primly.

People were starting to stare, but neither one of them really cared. They were locked in a battle of wills and neither one seemed likely to concede defeat.

“Newsflash, Cap, this is the 21st century, where women are fully capable of buying their own damn movie tickets.”

“Women in my day were completely capable of doing the exact same thing,” Steve countered smoothly, his voice as sweet as honey. “But there was this thing called manners back then, where when a man offered, a woman accepted.”

“That’s not manners, that’s social conditioning!” Darcy looked about as scandalized as Steve felt; really, when did paying for the movies become such a battle of the sexes?

“So help me, Darcy, if you don’t get out of my way, I will throw you over my shoulder. You can’t fight me when you’re looking at the ground.”

Steve was not normally so rough, so authoritarian, when it came to women – actually, he was usually tongue-tied and embarrassingly awkward – but Darcy had a way of bringing the dominance out of him. In truth, he couldn’t think of any other way around her foot stomping insistence, so he resorted to the most shocking thing he could think of to say. Unfortunately, it shocked him, too, and the two ended up staring at each other in mute surprise.

He couldn’t read the expression on Darcy’s face; it wasn’t one he had ever seen before, so every bit of Steve’s confidence evaporated miserably. Embarrassed – people really were staring, now – he nudged her feebly toward the ticket counter.

“Fine,” he mumbled and tried to fight the heat that he could feel pooling at the top of his ears. “You pay for the movie.”

Darcy didn’t say a word – she just gave him an unfathomable look and meekly turned around to present her card to the clerk. Steve stared stonily ahead and refused to meet anyone’s gaze – this was not going the way he had imagined. Why couldn’t she have just accepted his offer to pay for the damn tickets?

However, Steve didn’t go down without a fight. While he kept his distance during Darcy’s transaction, he made it a point to lean over and whisper in her ear as he stubbornly beat her to the door.

“Fine. You win,” he held the door closed, even as Darcy tried to tug it open.

The look she gave him could have killed. Steve couldn’t help feel a little surge of vindication as she finally gave up on opening the door herself and crossed her arms stubbornly over her bulky jacket.

He smiled sweetly and opened the door, gesturing gallantly for her to go through first. The tone of his next words did not invite argument and he was thankful when she silently sailed past him, her lips pursed, but without a peep of protest.

“I’m getting the popcorn.”

+ + +

The movies had gotten expensive. Steve reflected quietly as the theater filled up around them. Between the two of them, they had spent almost $40 on a few hours of mindless entertainment; he remembered when half of a dollar would pay for a whole afternoon at the movies. Of course, Darcy had explained the economics of modern America, so he understood inflation, and raises in income relative to the demand of goods…but still.

Forty bucks? That was ridiculous. He didn’t even want to reminiscent about what $40 could have gotten him 70 years ago. That was practically a lower enlisted man’s entire monthly military allowance.

As the theater dimmed in preparation for the previews, Steve wondered how much it would cost to actually take Darcy to dinner. He quickly decided that he would rather not reflect on such a luxury. For one, he highly doubted Darcy would want to be taken on a night around the town by a man who so very clearly did not share her feminist values. For another, he thought he might be so overwhelmed by the price of food alone that the idea would probably die the minute he tried to figure out where to take her.

He squirmed in his chair and tried to get comfortable. Darcy hadn’t spoken to him since their battle of wills at the ticket counter. In retrospect, Steve mused, he probably shouldn’t have threatened to throw her over his shoulder like some sort of unevolved caveman. At least she didn’t know that that was rather a favorite fantasy of his. If she knew how much he wanted to feel her squirm against him, the round curve of her ass cupped in one of his hands…well, she probably wouldn’t want to ever talk to him again. And if she knew how much he wanted to throw her down on his bed and ravish her (or, at least, figure out how to ravish her)…he slid a sideways glance at Darcy’s profile, which was flickering in the light of the first trailer. Oh, yeah. She’d rightly call him an old pervert and that would be the end of one of the only real friendships he had managed to make since waking up.

They didn’t touch for most of the movie and after a while, Steve forgot about the awkward silence that had fallen between them. Animated movies had definitely upped the sensory overload since he was a kid – hell, he could remember when The Wizard of Oz had debuted as the first full-length feature film in Technicolor. What unfolded in front of him on the Silver Screen was nothing short of decadent. He had to close his mouth repeatedly through the course of the film, because his ability to believe the complexity of what he was watching was tested about every five minutes.

He didn’t understand how the relatively “simple”, hand-drawn Disney movies of his day had evolved into this, but he loved it. Oh, and the songs were catchy, the story good – as one of the main female characters whirled about in the snow and proclaimed her independence to the mountains, he could see what Darcy meant by “female empowerment.”

As Darcy would say, he could dig it. All the women he had ever known were equally brave and strong, just perhaps in different ways in the context of their own times. In fact, the inherent strength of women was one of the reasons why he had always found himself tripping over his words in their presence.

He never had gotten over Molly Hannigan busting the spine of her mathematics book over his head in grammar school, for sticking gum in her hair on a dare. For the remainder of his education, she had a habit of throwing things at him whenever he worked up the courage to try and apologize. Ever since then, he had firmly believed that no matter what he said or did, he would inevitably wind up on the receiving end of a woman’s wrath. He decided later on in life that facing down the Red Skull was a preferable (and more easily understandable) fate.

Needless to say, then, he was rather shocked when halfway through the movie, Darcy made a rather clumsy show of stretching. Instead of crossing her right arm back over her chest, it landed in false bravado along the top of his seat, behind his shoulders. As enthralled as he was by the film, Steve was sufficiently distracted enough to look over at Darcy in mute surprise. She was staring resolutely ahead, her face completely impassive in the light of the screen.

Darcy didn’t do impassive.

She had to be up to something.

Steve sat in momentary indecision for a moment. Never in his whole life, had a woman been so forward. Except, maybe, for that secretary who had kissed him that one time without any invitation whatsoever. He never admitted it to Peggy, but that bold little blond had been a pretty good kisser.

Not that he’d had any point of reference at that point. Peggy had been infinitely better, in retrospect.

But, this was no wanton blond and certainly not Peggy. This was Darcy, with her arm around exactly half of his shoulders. He had to stifle a sudden snicker; Darcy was too small to get her arm the whole way around his back. It was kind of cute, actually. He, on the other hand, could have pulled her into his lap and wrapped his arms tightly around her with plenty of extra to spare.

After a moment’s hesitation, he leaned over toward her and whispered, his voice unintentionally husky –

“You know, that’s sort of my move.”

Good God, what had gotten into him? It wasn’t like him to be quite so bold.

“Well, I didn’t see you trying to make any moves. You snooze, you lose, pal.”

Good God, what had gotten into her? Steve stared at Darcy in amazement; her arm stayed resolutely behind him, but he thought he could see something like uncertainty flash across her profile.

She still wouldn’t look at him. So, he tried to reassure her and reached out to pat her knee. Unfortunately, as soon as his hand came in contact with her body, it stayed put. He didn’t mean to let his fingers squeeze around her thigh, just above her kneecap, but they did. And they stayed stubbornly there, even when his mind yelled at him to show some blessed decorum, for the love of God.

They stayed like that for the rest of the movie, her arm around his shoulder, his hand just above her knee. They were both tense, but Steve couldn’t help thinking that it was a good tense (did such a thing exist?). Something like anticipation unfurled between them and he had to remember to breath.

+ + +

The walk back to Stark Tower still carried a tinge of awkwardness, but Darcy seemed to be over whatever had made her sit like stone for the first half of the movie. She made some witty remarks about the film; Steve laughed. She slipped on a patch of black ice and he ended up catching her. That was an awkward moment, when their noses were mere inches apart for a few breathless seconds. But then she found her feet beneath her and they carried on as if nothing happened.

She did tuck her hand into the crook of his arm. They walked like that almost the entire way back and for once, Steve didn’t mind the cold.

The night had been awkward-awful-amazing. It made Steve smile to himself as he watched Darcy shake snow out of her hair once they had reached the warmth of what they both now called “home”. He didn’t really understand where the sudden moves in the movie theater had come from, but he wasn’t complaining. For some inscrutable reason, Darcy seemed to be letting her guard down around him.

She wasn’t a touchy-feely sort of person; definitely not the sort to just put her arm randomly around someone in the middle of a movie. Steve didn’t know much about womanly quirks, but he understood people and he intuitively knew that for all her talk, Darcy didn’t really open up to others. In fact, he was pretty sure that was why she talked so much – so no one would notice the way she kept the world at arm’s length.

So, she shocked him even further when they stepped off the elevator and she turned to him to announce her desire to go to bed.

“Is it that late?” Steve glanced at his wrist in surprise.

They had stepped out of the elevator at the common area level – where the living room and kitchen were located – but Darcy was already sidling back toward the closed doors. The room in front of them was empty however, and Steve realized just how late it was when he eyed his watch.

“Well, it’s only ten or so…but you know, I’m convinced S.H.I.E.L.D has an unspoken curfew at 9:30. At least, I do. I turn into a pumpkin at ten, I swear,” she yawned again as she mashed her thumb against the elevator’s up button.

“Yeah, I’m right behind you, actually,” Steve admitted; his stomach growled though and he had to laugh. “Though, it looks like I’m making a detour to the kitchen, first.”

“Well,” he didn’t realize it until it was too late, but Darcy took a step toward him as she spoke. “Come here, big guy.”

She hugged him. Steve was rendered completely speechless and for a second, he was immobilized in shock. But, then deeply ingrained habits took over and he wrapped his arms around her shoulders in a silent expression of approval.

“Had fun at the movies,” Darcy mumbled into his shirt; Steve got goose pimples where her breath gently pressed the cotton into his skin.

The hug was brief, but it shook Steve to his very core. He had a fleeting impression of her warmth, her curves, pressed gently against him and he suddenly didn’t want to let go. Images of throwing her over his shoulder returned, but in a moment of adult wisdom, he decided that would probably solicit a response rather like Molly Hannigan’s in the third grade. As that was precisely not what he was looking for in his relationship with Darcy, he left his urges at a brief tightening of his arms around her slighter body. He also resisted the urge to press a kiss against the top of her head, so he settled with nuzzling her hair ever so briefly. He wasn’t even sure she noticed; her body was tense beneath his fingertips and he knew that as impulsive as the action might have been, prolonged contact with him was making her uncomfortable.

They broke the hug easily enough, however, and while the tips of Darcy’s ears were a suspicious shade of red, there didn’t seem to be any inherent awkwardness between them. Steve could have kissed her.

“We should do it again sometime,” she graced him with a cheeky grin and wiggled her fingers playfully at him as she stepped into the elevator.

“Night, Darcy,” he finally found his voice, just as the elevator doors were closing.

“Night, Steve,” her voice reached him, even as the doors slid shut.

He thought he heard her say something else, but whatever it was, was swallowed up by several thick inches of steel (Tony believed elevators were a defensive blind-side and armored them appropriately. Steve thought the measure was mildly ridiculous when one had a J.A.R.V.I.S and a Hulk.) He stared stupidly at the elevator doors for several moments, as dumbfounded as if she had reached up and kissed him.

After a few moments, Steve’s blue eyes narrowed thoughtfully and the warm-fuzzy feelings abated ever so slightly.

Darcy was up to something.

Notes

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